Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Transgender journey: 'I sit with teeth gritted, fists clenched and toes curled'

In her final consultation before sex reassignment surgery, Juliet Jacques is told exactly what will happen to her body - and what could go wrong

    Juliet Jacques   
    guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 July 2012 06.42 EDT   

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/18/transgender-journey-teeth-gritted-fists-clenched-toes-curled (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/18/transgender-journey-teeth-gritted-fists-clenched-toes-curled)

Britain's most famous transsexual autobiographies, Jan Morris's Conundrum and April Ashley's Odyssey, take their readers to Casablanca, Morocco, where the authors have sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Both place and practice are presented as exotic and otherworldly, partly as Morris is a travel writer by profession, but also because then (Morris visited Dr Georges Burou's surgery in 1972), SRS was harder to access in Britain, privately or via the NHS, performed little and discussed less.

Forty years on, I'm trudging along Fulham Palace Road on my way to Charing Cross hospital, where they've performed SRS since 1936. I've come to this part of London for every consultation thus far (although the last time I was here wasn't for the Gender Identity Clinic, but Norwich City's 2-1 defeat at Fulham, where I saw something utterly extraordinary: Aaron Wilbraham scoring a Premier League goal). This time I'm attending the hospital, where they'll examine my full medical history to see if I meet their physical requirements for surgery, and then the nearby clinic to confirm my understanding of the techniques and what to do beforehand.